The growth in the use of portable electronic devices such as mobile communication devices, cellular telephones and the like has driven the design of such devices to become smaller and more convenient. Consumers have become accustomed to the convenience and portability of such electronic devices, particularly, cellular telephones and other convergence devices, such as audio and audio-video devices with communication capabilities and have demanded that those devices become even more convenient and even more portable. The constant thrust in portable device design is thus to make the device as small as possible.
There is a further movement in portable device design in making the device display as large as possible in order to present a user interface experience which is as full as possible. For example to make the display capable of displaying images with as much detail as possible, and to provide input from the user without the disadvantages associated with a small display touch screen device.
However the compromise and problem associated with the combination of both making the device as small as possible but the display as large as possible within the device size has been to push the non-display components and in particular the earpiece/speaker mechanical integration components towards the edge of a portable device. This not only causes problems with respect to integration of internal earpiece/speaker mechanical components but also provides a much smaller surrounding surface neighbouring the earpiece port which causes producing a sufficiently good acoustic seal between the apparatus and the user's ear difficult and therefore reduces significantly the earpiece performance.
Embodiments of the present application aim to address the above problem.